


Your Guess and Mine

by manic_intent



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Amnesia, M/M, Powerplay, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 16:54:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the following prompt on the kink meme: "Moriarty gets in the way of a falling piano, or any other situation, which results in a bump to the head and leaves him amnesiac. He decides to go to get himself checked out when he realizes he doesn't know who he is, and finds himself in the office of Doctor John Watson. He lives temporarily at 221B and becomes BFFs with Sherlock and John before getting his memory back, then is conflicted in only that way a master criminal who is friends with a master detective he once wanted to kill can be.</p><p>The Bee Gees aren't getting him out of this one."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting an extended version of this on AO3 in the hopes that it'll inspire my muse to actually get around to finishing it, lol. Umm. I don't know how often this will be updated. I'll try?

[A/N: I'm more used to writing Sebastian's POV. Had to alter the first half of the prompt a little.]

I.

Sebastian was having a quick coffee in a forgettable sidewalk cafe when the past sauntered past him in a black and white Che Guevara shirt, hands tucked into faded gray jeans, white headphones jammed into his ears and humming a jaunty tune, and for a moment he thought the string of weeks spent barely sleeping and running himself ragged all over Europe had finally caught up with him.

He stood up from the table so quickly that he knocked the chair over, and it took two, three bounding steps before he got to the past's retreating back, heart in his mouth, grabbing him by the shoulder and whirling him around. Too overwhelmed to say anything, Sebastian gasped instead, like a dumb fish, blinking, and Moriarty - Jim - stared blankly up at him, tilting his head.

"Sorry," Jim drawled, mildly, "Do I know you?"

Sebastian swallowed hard and grit his teeth until his jaw ached, remembering himself. Careless. They could be watched - it was always best to assume so. He could have just blown his boss' cover. He was a _professional_ , for Christ's sake. Gruffly, he muttered, "My mistake," and quickly shuffled back to the cafe to finish his coffee, though he made sure to keep Jim in his peripheral vision for as long as he could. 

It was the most painfully long cup of coffee that he had ever swallowed. Sebastian paid, as nonchalantly as he could, and then he drifted into the crowd, calculating routes. The cafe was a few blocks from Baker Street, but Jim was anything but predictable, and sometimes it amused Sebastian's mercurial boss to play a bit of hide and seek.

After an hour painstakingly canvassing the alleys around 221B, Sebastian found Jim Moriarty smoking a block or so away, eyes closed. He didn't respond when Sebastian whistled the first time, though he glanced around at the second and blinked at him, as though puzzled. Instead of walking away, however, or giving Sebastian a signal, Jim padded towards him, head tilted again, taking off his headphones.

"Are you following me?" Jim asked, stopping at a safe distance. "Because I don't have any money."

"I'm fine, sir," Sebastian exhaled, so relieved that he felt dizzy. Jim was _alive_. "I didn't realize that you survived, I thought... Will you be in Mayfair tonight? I'll update you."

"Sorry, you really have mistaken me for someone else," Jim flashed one of his quick, plastic smiles. "Who are you again? Do I want to know?"

"Uh." Sebastian stalled, blinking, then he reached up to tug at the tip of his collar, their signal for _query: watchers_. Jim, however, only watched him with mild curiosity, even when he did it again, and Sebastian eventually sighed. "Look, boss, I wasn't followed. I checked. Twice. Everyone still thinks that you're dead. Us, the police, MI6, the works. It's been a fucked up half a year trying to hold the outfit together without you, all right? So I'll _appreciate_ it, for once, if you stopped _fucking with me_. With all due respect. Sir."

Jim stared at him, blinking, then he let out one of his barking laughs. "This is a joke, right? Did Sherlock put you up to this? Some sort of real-time experiment? An ex-military man can't be _that_ down on his luck, even if he's been dishonorably discharged. Besides, your clothes have seen better days but they're still of good quality-"

"We don't have time for your _games_ , boss," Sebastian snapped, knowing that he was treading on thin ice but also knowing that he was far too furious and frustrated to care, "If you've finished arsing around with that Sherlock bloke, the organisation _needs you_ , all right?"

Instead of snarling at him, however, Jim held up his hands, palms up, backing away towards the exit of the alley. "Whoah. Whoah. Look. Okay. If this wasn't a prank, okay. Calm down. You've got the wrong man. I'm a down and out actor called Richard Brook. Definitely not some criminal mastermind overlord, or whatever you're implying. And you might want to get out of here before I call the police."

"Boss, wait-" Sebastian took a step forward, and Jim instantly backpedalled out of the alley, breaking into a run. 

Cursing, Sebastian lunged forward, but the boss could put up an impressive turn of speed whenever he wanted to, and he was running _towards Baker Street_. Astonished, Sebastian was about to follow, when a black sedan car with tinted windows started to slow down in the intermittent passing traffic. Clenching his fists, Sebastian forced himself to relax, turning to walk away in the opposite direction. After a second or so, the sedan car sped up again, and eventually turned out of sight. 

Something, Sebastian thought, bewildered and angry, was extremely fucked up.

1.0.

Richard did not, in fact, tell any of his flatmates about the strange ex-military man who had followed him home, but he was sure that Sherlock had deduced something. Richard would have been disappointed if he hadn't. Sherlock was sprawled in his armchair by the window, scraping away at his violin, ostensibly lost within his own head, but Richard knew better, by the set of his feet and the tense arch of his palms.

Still, Sherlock hadn't mentioned it as yet, which was surprising in and of itself, and as such Richard busied himself with the chemicals occupying the kitchen table. One corner of the table had bubbled into a black, pitted surface, and the entire floor was growing noxious enough that John had called in an early night, but Sherlock didn't move, seemingly immune. 

"Nitroglycerine," Sherlock said, finally, without looking up, "A drop."

"I was thinking, two."

"One first, then another when it's stirred," Sherlock amended. Building the suspected murder weapon from scratch had been an ongoing experiment of theirs for nearly a week, despite Mrs. Hudson's increasingly strenuous protests. Like Sherlock, Richard cared not a whit about the tedious widow of the murder victim or the attention, but the intellectual stimulation that came from working out the locked room puzzle was exhilarating.

"Do you have any?"

"Glyceryl trinitrate, under the sink. It'll suffice." Sherlock didn't bother to gesture, eyes closed again. "Had a shock on your way home?"

Richard paused briefly in the middle of rooting under the dank kitchen sink. "Some stranger mistook me for someone."

"Huh." Sherlock tilted his head to the side, to glance out of the window, as though already bored with the conversation.

"How was your day?" Richard's fingers closed gingerly on the clear glass bottle. "Fun times in Scotland Yard, I presume. They threw you an I'm-So-Sorry party, did they? Must have been awkward. You missed a little scrap of tinsel in your hair. I hope you told the Sergeant that she's no longer the exclusive mistress."

Sherlock flicked the offending slip of silver away, languidly, and smirked. "It was tempting, but no." 

Richard arched his eyebrows at Sherlock. "You mean, after all that they did, you just drank fruit punch and sang a little auld lang syne with the local bobbies?" John had explained, in a rather stop-gap fashion, exactly what had happened when Richard had been in a coma from the accident, the culmination of one of their elaborate social experiments gone wildly, spectacularly awry. He supposed that it was good luck that his friends had offered to take him in while he was still trying to get all his faculties back in line.

"No. I learned." Sherlock noted distantly, and at Richard's snort, added, petulantly, "Yes, I am _fairly_ capable of _learning_ from my mistakes."

They bickered until the chemicals started to make Richard's eyes water, and then he trudged up to the loft floor, to his room, rubbing absently at his shoulder. As he usually did, Richard lay on the bed after washing up, hands folded over his chest, watching the ceiling, silently.

The stranger had not seemed... utterly unfamiliar.

There was a shade of a memory there, somewhere. From a newspaper article, perhaps. Whatever the man had mentioned, it had definitely sounded illegal, and from what he had gathered and the records that Sherlock had passed to him, Richard Brook was a mere down and out actor with crazy friends and a mind far too quick for his luck at life.

Minutes ticked by, then hours, as he tried to chase the shadow in his mind, and then finally Richard gave up and closed his eyes, with a low sigh. It would probably come to him with time. Or so he hoped.

II.

Sebastian would have been gradually inclined to think that he'd either (a) dreamed it all up or (b) found the boss' long-lost fucked up twin brother, or something like that, if not for the fact that he'd more or less immediately picked up a tail after getting a few more blocks away from Baker Street. Given that he'd been successfully staying under the radar in London for three weeks and counting, this was both unsettling and exhilarating at the same time.

Still, hunters didn't like to be hunted, and he _did_ have to keep his hand in. 

Sebastian lured his tail on a circular chase until he bored of the game, then he caught the suit unlucky enough to be assigned to him and knifed him, careful to keep out of the arterial spray. Messy work, knives, and a touch too personal, but easier to explain on run-of-the-mill thugs, less of a calling card. Sebastian gloved up, wiped down, took the suit's wallet, and tossed it away into a dumpster once he was three blocks away. He kept the cash, for appearances, all twenty-fucking-five pounds of it.

In Mayfair, the perimeter surveillance had increased enough that a nervous buzz filtered through the moment Sebastian let himself into the townhouse, and even the doorman, a mountainous bruiser with the unfortunate name of Egbert, was shooting him sidelong glances. Sebastian nodded at them but said nothing, still thinking. No use getting the Outfit excited unless he'd scoped out the lay of the land, after all. 

After cleaning up, he worked, allocating tasks, skimming ledgers, checking reports and emails. Sebastian might just have found Jim, maybe, but the world still needed perfectly faked passports, behaving jurors, the disappearance of the difficult, and smooth heists. 

Small time work, compared to cracking Pentonville, the Tower and the Bank of England all at once, but as much as Sebastian hated to admit it, the Outfit was surviving on the small time now after word had filtered out that Jim Moriarty was dead. Sebastian might be the best shot in Europe, but he wasn't much good for grand plans and intricate probability calculations: he kept them all in clover and they hadn't had to scale down too much, but the profit wasn't quite like what it used to be. 

The surprisingly mundane routines to actually _running_ a criminal organisation bored Jim. And when Jim was bored, things tended to explode. It was why the jobs that he deigned to get involved with tended towards obsessively destructive complexity laced with the lives of ruined families. 

As much as Sebastian had thought it over the top before, he had to admit - in the industry of thieves and murderers, reputation was everything, and no one double-crossed the Mayfair Outfit; at least, not after Jimmy "Shoehorn" Barnes the cracksman had come home one night to a Mona Lisa jigsaw mural in the foyer of his house, picked out carefully in the viscera of his wife and children.

Besides, other than the profit, the fun wasn't quite what it used to be, either. 

If Jim hadn't left express instructions to the Outfit to leave Sherlock Holmes alone should the detective survive their insane game of cat and mouse, Sebastian would have set his CheyTac's sights on the detective's thick curls a long time ago.

When Sebastian topped off the day with an old scotch, he was increasingly convinced that this was another one of the boss' annoyingly complex long games, the ones where he kept his own Outfit guessing, twenty, thirty steps behind him. After all, it would be so goddamned _like_ Jim-bloody-Moriarty to 'happen' to walk past him on the street, and then have a fucking laugh at his expense playing at being somebody else. 

But if this was just another extension of Jim's weird little war against Sherlock Holmes, Sebastian had had bloody enough. The Outfit was a shadow of what it used to be, and his hunter's instincts could smell the beginning of an end. 

Jim Moriarty had to return to Mayfair. 

_Convincing_ the boss to do anything that he didn't want to tended to be a pain in the fucking arse, however, and Jim wasn't averse to mauling his own Chief of Staff if things didn't go his way. This was going to take subtlety.

Sebastian had cased Baker Street for the boss hundreds of times; he'd once even spent a week or so camped out in an apartment, potting high-caliber assassins - it'd been poor sport compared to sitting up a tree in the Kumaon jungle, but the boss' will was absolute. A different breed of tiger was on the prowl now; there were rather more innocuous sedans in the congested traffic than there should have been, and some of the passers-by didn't quite seem right.

Jim Moriarty and his curly-haired skinny nemesis might play at deductions and logic; Sebastian preferred his gut. He kept a low profile and a high coat collar, and set himself to trailing the most dangerous man in London in the middle of a host of other hunters.

2.0.

Oddly enough, the ex-military, most-likely-criminal stranger started stalking Richard, and it was growing mildly annoying. He made no further attempt to contact Richard directly, but he'd always be a few persons away in a queue for coffee, a few shelves away in a bookstore, or just out of peripheral vision on the street.

Richard briefly considered pepper spray, or a taser, or maybe 119C's vicious ginger cat; either option thrown into a stranger's face, however ex-military, would be a suitable deterrent. Something within him balked at the idea, though; and Richard wasn't sure why. He'd never met the man before in his life, after all.

Probably.

Amnesia was so tiresome sometimes.

Still.

Inconvenient and stifling as it was, the stranger was cute in a rugged, I'm-definitely-concealing-various-weaponry sort of way, with a jaw that you could probably cut paper on, liberally sprinkled with stubble, and his green-gray eyes were beautifully, violently feral, like the cold, clear eyes of a hunting cat. Richard began to wake with half-remembered dreams of a gorgeously eclectic townhouse, wood panelling, Queen Anne furniture, Warhol and steel, and those feral green-gray eyes looking up at him, kneeling, waiting. Freud would have been in ecstatics at all the implications.

After a week of it all, Richard took a surreptitious photograph of the man with his phone, while pretending to obliviously enjoy a chicken sandwich in a corner patisserie, and sent it to Sherlock.

_Familiar?_  
 **R.B.**

Sherlock's answer was nearly instantaneous. 

_Ex-military. Big game hunter. Ambidextrous. Hitman by profession. Secretly very literate._  
 **S.H.**

Richard rolled his eyes.

_I wasn't looking for a deduction. Do you know this man? He's been following me._  
 **R.B.**

This time, there was a longer pause.

_His name is Sebastian Moran._  
 **S.H.**

Richard _knew_ it. Sherlock had to be up to one of his sodding pranks again.

_Friend of yours?_  
 **R.B.**

_Enemy. Second most dangerous man in London._  
 **S.H.**

Of course. Sherlock didn't _have_ friends. Other than John and Richard himself. And even then, only for a given value of 'friend'. 

_Does he want you dead?_  
 **R.B.**

_Quite likely._  
 **S.H.**

Richard rubbed briefly at his temple. This was quite possibly worse than he had imagined. He did know that Sherlock attracted a positively insane stable of criminals, some of whom took it into their heads to invade Baker Street now and then and terrorize poor Mrs Hudson. It hadn't occurred to Richard that John and himself might ever become casualties in Sherlock's crusade against boredom.

Though if Sherlock was speaking the truth about Moran - why in the name of anything that was holy would such a criminal _want_ with Richard? Mistaking him for his leader, at that? It beggared belief. Which meant two logical possibilities: one, that Richard had indeed been some sort of mega-criminal-overlord prior to his amnesia, and two, that Sherlock was carrying out one of his bloody social experiments again.

Given that Richard had last seen Sherlock testing the psychological effects of an ice water drip interrupting a man's sleep every three point five hours on John, just a month ago, it was entirely possible that it was now Richard's turn. Testing the psychological effects of trying to convince an amnesiac man that he was a criminal overlord, maybe.

Well. Whatever Sherlock was hoping to get out of his bloody experiment, Richard wasn't going to play along. Squaring his shoulders, Richard marched over to Moran's table, and sat down. The edge of the newspaper flicked down, and Moran arched an eyebrow. "Afternoon."

"What happened to the honorifics?" Richard drawled.

"Afternoon, _sir_ ," Moran corrected himself, an unrepentant quirk pulling up the side of his mouth, and he folded his newspaper. "Ready to come home yet, boss?"

"You're persistent."

"You hired me because I was persistent, sir." 

"Did I also hire you because you were hot?" If Sherlock was listening in from anywhere, that probably just sent him into spasms. Sherlock had a hilarious aversion to primal human intimacy.

Moran's other eyebrow rose, but he seemed unruffled. Amused, even. "You've never mentioned that to me before, boss."

"Didn't want to spook the armed help," Richard noted as facetiously as possible. "Well then, take me home, Seb." 

A wary tension seemed to ebb out of Moran's shoulders when Richard tried that awful abbreviation of his name, and Moran even smiled, warm and sharp, gorgeous in the coiled spring of his muscular frame and the wildness of his eyes. " _Finally_ ," he muttered, and pulled out a phone, unlocking it with a flick and keying in a code, then calling someone on speed dial. "Bert? This is Moran. Pick me up at the third drop. Yeah." 

Moran settled the bill, and then insisted on taking an oddly circumlocutory amble around the block, ending up in a side street just out of Coventry street. A sleek black Bentley with tinted windows was waiting, with an enormous man waiting nervously beside the passenger door. He flinched and crossed himself when they came close, then settled down when Moran shot him a hard glare, opening the door hastily for them.

For a prank, this was a pretty elaborate one, even by Sherlock's standards. 

The inside of the car smelled a little like whisky and something smoky and chemical, and the driver's seat and the front passenger seat were walled off by opaque glass. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, and Richard wondered if this was meant to be a Clue. That would be so much like Sherlock.

There were hidden cameras, perhaps, maybe in the leather upholstery. Deliberately, Richard rested a palm on Moran's thigh, as proprietary as you please, and hoped that Sherlock was frothing gently. The ex-soldier was good for a pawn, Richard noted: he didn't seem surprised at all, though his lips parted briefly, and he didn't look away when Richard caught his eyes and squeezed.

God, the underworld or whatever it was seemed to have been good for Sebastian Moran - his thigh felt like it was made of solid muscle. Curious, Richard trailed fingers down, following the inseam of Moran's jeans, and the hunter's eyes started to smoulder. Richard straightened, thick excitement twisting into a slow burn within him, and his jeans started to feel tighter.

"How long do we have?" Richard purred. He might as well get _something_ out of Sherlock's games.

"Bad traffic. It'll take time." Moran's voice had grown deeper, though he hadn't moved, and just as Richard was considering what to do next, Moran's eyes flicked down briefly, tellingly, towards Richard's crotch.

He wasn't really one for wasting an opportunity like that. And it'll teach Sherlock to play his silly games. Richard shifted back until his shoulders hit the window, and spread his legs, crooking his fingers. That seemed to be all the invitation that Moran needed; he uncurled, all lean, leonine grace, set his big hands almost reverently over Richard's knees and bent his head to undo the zipper of his jeans with his _teeth_.

Hah. Sherlock definitely paid for talent.

Military porn probably had a grain of truth in it; Sebastian gave head like he was starving for it, all sloppy bobs and choked off groans when Richard was rude and bucked; eventually, he held Richard down easily, by his hips, and took him all the way down and _hummed_ and that was all the abuse that Richard's self-control could take, really - he spent himself with a low hiss, fingers clenched in Sebastian's shirt collar.

Sebastian was a gentleman after all; he swallowed, tucked Richard back in, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Holding Richard's dazed stare, he grinned lazily and licked his hand clean, pink tongue swiping up over the knuckles, and Richard grit his teeth as he felt his cock twitch, over-sensitized and thorny. Fuck.

He didn't bother about quid pro quo, and Sebastian waited for a moment before pushing himself back into his side of the car, his arousal a sharp tent in his jeans, but he didn't even adjust himself, glancing out of the window, hands on his thighs like he'd been _trained_. Richard's mouth felt dry, and he allowed himself a slow, greedy grin.

Well, _well_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mayfair House is _gorgeous_.

I.

Sebastian was beginning to suspect that either his twin brother theory was correct, or the boss was still in one of his Moods. Jim didn't seem to answer to anything but 'boss' - not that this was really uncommon - and he didn't recognise any of the staff. The entire situation was getting roundly unsettling, and the hard on he'd suffered for the whole trip to Mayfair was long gone.

And as to the House...

The Mayfair House was a fucking security nightmare. MI6 had known about it a long time ago; Jim himself had once said something snarky about how in ten years or so, give or take, MI6's more or less permanent stake-out of the place might give it adverse possession rights in its favourite camping spots. 

It was an old house, which meant large glass windows, perfect for snipers, and it was a townhouse, which meant easy access from neighboring properties. Jim had long purchased some of the houses beside it, sandwiching it in a buffer zone, but a determined assassin could still shimmy up the corner property's brickwork and decorative tile and skirt over all the pretty metal balconies over to their lot.

Still, Jim had long resisted Sebastian's increasingly louder suggestions that they move someplace less prominent and more defensible. He wasn't entirely sure why, but the boss wasn't immune to sentiment, and he loved the goddamned place as much as he was capable of loving anything. The property had two full time housekeepers, a small army of tradesmen whenever required, and it was filled from the ground floor up with priceless art and furniture that would have made any interior designer faint from the excess and the chaotic juxtaposition. 

Rembrandts hung alongside Warhols, Monets with Gerhard Richters, antique Queen Anne chairs set against steel and glass Parnian table, and the pride of place over the mantlepiece in the drawing room was held by a remarkably ugly scrawl that was apparently a genuine Picasso. Sebastian wasn't much for art appreciation, never was, but if he ever decided to take the Outfit legit, they could probably live comfortably off the paint jobs for the foreseeable future.

Jim didn't seem to recognise his baby.

Or... in actual fact, Sebastian felt, as Jim slowly circled the house, Jim _did_ remember, but only in the way Sebastian sometimes woke up sweating and groping for his pistol, his mind still full of the scents and shadows of the jungle, or the dusty crags of Afghanistan. Jim's face was tight with the frozen stillness that people tended to mistake for boredom - Sebastian, however, knew what it was. Jim's crazy, remarkable brain was a hundred-per-cent focused on something, and usually it was best to get out of his way. 

Still, watching the boss walk around his own goddamned study, peering at everything like he was memorizing the details, Sebastian finally lost his patience. "Boss?"

"This place is remarkable." Jim mused, ignoring him. "It's exactly like how I thought my perfect house would be like." 

A sinking feeling was beginning to curl around his gut. "Jim, what's the last thing that you remember?"

Jim took a moment to realize that he was being referred to, then he eyed him thoughtfully, even as he ran his palm over the steel rim of the Parnian table in his study and settled himself into the Victorian dining chair like a king returning to his throne, curling his fingers over the antique wood before plopping his elbows on the table.

"I woke up in a hospital."

"Anything else?"

"Tubes everywhere," Jim shrugged, in that weirdly exaggerated way that he did, birdlike, shoulders arching up almost to his ears. "Machines. Nurses. Sherlock's annoying violin."

Sebastian muttered a string of choice words under his breath, making Jim's eyebrows rise. Bloody _Sherlock Holmes_ again. "What did he tell you?"

"I couldn't remember my name, so I asked him for it." Jim frowned slightly. "He seemed surprised. Confused. Asked a few questions, then he left the room. Came back with a wad of identification papers for one Richard Brook." Jim shrugged again. "Guess that's me."

"No. No, it's not," Sebastian growled, hands twitching. "Your name is James Moriarty. You're the leader of-"

"Ah, _ah_ ," Jim raised a palm, cutting him off. "Look, whatever Sherlock Holmes is paying you, I think it's probably not enough to cover the need for all this bullshit, let alone that lovely little interlude in the car, but I've had enough of his game, so if you'll excuse me, I'll like to sit here and drink in this perfect little gem for a while until the real owner comes back."

" _You're_ the real owner," Sebastian snapped, his temper starting to simmer.

"Really," Jim snorted. "A townhouse in Mayfair? Me? And who might you be, then?"

"Your Chief of Staff!" Belatedly, Sebastian lowered his voice, as Jim cocked his head at him. Maybe Jim really _had_ forgotten. Lord knew that Sebastian had seen head injuries do strange things to men in Afghanistan. "Look. I know it's a lot to take in, but this _is_ your house. This is your life. Now I'm... I'm going to let things sink in. Go wherever you like in the house, maybe something will kick back. I'll be in the drawing room if you need me."

"No," Jim disagreed, when he turned to leave. "You're staying where you are." 

"I think it's better if I-"

" _Seb_ ," Jim stated, in that whip-sharp, flat tone that always signalled danger, and Sebastian hesitated.

"Sir... yes, sir."

"Come over here, Seb," Jim hauled himself up from the chair and perched on the edge of the Parnian, hands clasped over his thighs. "On your knees."

Stiffly, Sebastian obeyed, dropping onto his knees in the carpet. He'd thought to close the door, at least, but this not-Jim was beginning to prove disconcerting. And frustrating. He didn't pull away, however, when fingers tipped up his chin, though he glared, lips pressed thin. 

"Hmm," Jim tipped his chin up, further, until he was beginning to get a crick in his neck, then he dropped his grip. The boss' flat eyes went distant for a moment, then he asked, slowly, "Where's your collar?"

Sebastian blinked, startled - did Jim remember? - only for Jim to shake his head and rub a palm over his eyes. "I think... you have one, don't you?"

"And you have the leash to it," Sebastian's voice was hoarse, "In that drawer."

"Kinky," Jim kicked his feet out a little, his eyes going distant again. "Were we lovers?"

"Not... exactly," Sebastian hedged.

"Are you going to tell me that it's complicated?" Jim smirked.

"No, sir," Sebastian hesitated for a moment longer, then he sighed. "I run the Outfit for you - the day-to-day stuff that you couldn't give a damn about. Sometimes you'll tell me to kill someone. Sometimes you'll tell me to fetch you things, or look something up, or fuck you."

"So you're like an all purpose personal assistant," Jim seemed amused; he was wearing one of his too-wide, plastic grins. 

"You use people. You use me."

"And you don't resent that?"

It was Sebastian's turn to shrug. "I'm a soldier. And this pays well."

"That's not the _whole_ truth, is it?" Jim's grin widened out, further than what has to be comfortable, and Sebastian knew the signs, forced down his trained instinct to dodge, and rolled with the blow when it came. Jim cursed and wrung his wrist - didn't lock it before the punch, served the mad little bastard right - and then he slipped off the Parnian and shoved Sebastian down into a sprawl, onto his back, teeth bared like he was going to go for Sebastian's throat - then he abruptly started to giggle, in that nasal, scratchy sound that never failed to rub Sebastian the wrong way.

"Look at that," Jim drawled, and Sebastian belatedly realized that he was hard, and Jim's skinny arse was pressed snug against him. Nowhere to hide - not that he would. Or _could_. The boss always knew everything - even when his brain wasn't quite all there. "Did we use to do this often?"

 _Define often_ , Sebastian wanted to say, but Jim had dragged him up into Jim's idea of a kiss, which was more like being mauled by teeth than any shade of tenderness, and yes, this was definitely Jim Moriarty, amnesia or not. Sebastian had never met anyone else who had less of an understanding - or interest - of the usual mechanics of sex. Jim bit, scratched, didn't really give a fuck whether Sebastian got off or not, and wasn't above producing knives for the sort of 'light' bloodplay that sometimes left Sebastian needing stitches, and it always, always got his blood up like no other man or woman he'd ever fucked.

Sometimes, Sebastian felt that Jim's madness was contagious.

Jim bloodied his lip, then his neck, and when Sebastian jerked and gasped harshly he giggled again, crazy bastard, grinding against him with a little too much force to be comfortable, denim to denim, and fuck if Sebastian wasn't already close, blindsided and high on the violence. Jim always did this to him, always; it didn't matter that technically, his boss was a spectacularly awful lay and the most inconsiderate lover he'd ever fucked; it didn't matter that Jim had a hair trigger of violence in his brilliant mind that meant that Sebastian was risking death whenever he let Jim curl his fingers around his neck and leave a necklace of bruises.

Jim was giggling again, pitching breathless this time, the flat of his right palm pressed hard against Sebastian's jugular when he commanded, "Well then, get on with it, I want to see the rest of the house," and ground back roughly; it _hurt_ as the denim caught and pulled, he felt raw and Sebastian was swallowing a choked whimper as his hips stuttered, coming in his pants like a fucking _schoolboy_. Jim was grinning his too-wide grin, manic and murder in the gleam of his teeth, and unbelievably, he was straightening up, making a show of dusting himself off. 

"Well then," Jim straightened his cuffs, his voice perfectly steady, and Sebastian didn't need to look up to know that Jim's hard on - if any - had probably already subsided. The boss sometimes possessed an insane degree of control over his skinny body. "I'm going exploring. Ta-ta."

On hindsight, Sebastian should have just followed his evil sod of a master, soiled jeans and all. By the time he'd cleaned up and changed, Jim had given all the staff the slip and had disappeared. 

Sebastian raised a palm to cut off Bert's profuse apologies, pinching at the bridge of his nose. He was fairly sure where Jim would have run off to, anyway, and it wasn't as though things weren't all going to plan. He'll have to be patient.

1.0.

Sherlock wasn't home by the time Richard managed to navigate traffic and the travails of the London Underground and squeeze his way back into Baker Street, but John was. The doctor looked exhausted and he stank of camomile and disinfectant - clearly just back from work - as he carefully transferred the remains of the exotic Southeast Asian rainforest frog that Sherlock had been dissecting into the kitchen to clear a space for his laptop.

"John," Richard greeted him breezily, and John nodded slowly at him as he started up his laptop. "Where's Sherlock?"

"No idea. Replenishing the milk, hopefully," John suggested, with the air of a man who knew that the moon was more likely to turn pink than for Sherlock to actually _be_ useful unless there was something in it for him.

"Do you know anyone by the name of 'Sebastian Moran'?" Richard shuffled some books and papers off the couch and plopped himself onto it.

"No, why?" 

"I think Sherlock paid him a lot of money to play a really complicated prank on me," Richard shrugged, as insouciantly as he could, and tried not to make it look as though he was watching John closely. "He's been following me around, trying to tell me that I'm some sort of criminal mastermind."

John was a terrible liar, really; he had an extensive library of 'tells', all of which Richard could identify easily. Awful at poker. And a good weathervane for Sherlock and his games. At present, the good Doctor had frozen, blinking, then he unfroze all at once and turned back to his laptop. "Sounds, well, sounds just like Sherlock, doesn't it?"

So. Not a prank.

Well then. Richard wasn't sure if he should feel surprised at his utter lack of surprise. The Mayfair House remained solidly present in his mind, every perfect inch of it, larger than life; the House and the beautifully trained attack dog that seemed to come with it. All of it felt like his handiwork, something that he would have devised from the back of his mind had he only method and motive - and it looked now that he had both, at some point in time.

"Why would Sherlock be friends with a master criminal?" Richard asked, mystified. As mercurial, unpredictable, and occasionally downright insane as his flatmate had been over the past few months, nothing about Sherlock had given Richard the impression that he had ever been on any side other than that of the angels. For all that Sherlock could be a remarkably cruel man, he _tried_ to be good, even in the face of outright ridicule or dislike by the police. He didn't always meet the mark, and he probably alienated far more people than he actually helped, but Richard could respect Sherlock's stubborn pursuit of societal morality, even if he didn't quite understand it.

John sighed, closed his laptop, and turned over to frown unhappily at him. John had taken _weeks_ to grow used to Richard's presence in the loft. Previously, Richard had thought it simply because Baker Street was fairly crowded as it was, and John probably resented a new, broke live-in roommate with almost the same habits as Sherlock. Now, he was beginning to suspect differently.

"You're not going to be difficult about this, are you?" John asked warily, and Richard was immediately aware that as mild-mannered and short as John was, he was still a soldier, Hippocratic oath or not, and he could probably comfortably punch out even the regular members of Lestrade's squad if he wanted to. Tossing a skinny, not-actor out of the window probably wouldn't even strain his back.

"I'm not sure what I'm _meant_ to be 'about this', John," Richard said, as reasonably as he could. "I was made to believe that I was some sort of down-and-out actor-"

"Yes, well," John muttered, "Not one of Sherlock's best ideas, I'll admit. All of us objected rather strenuously. And before you say anything, _you_ crafted the identity forms."

That made sense, somehow; a weird sense of satisfaction curled slowly in the back of his mind. The forms had been perfect. "He was trying to reform me?" 

"No, I rather think that he was going to give it all a go just to see what bit would explode at the end," John muttered. "You know how Sherlock is," he added, automatically, and Richard nodded, just as automatically, and they both started in their chairs, John's face bleeding into a curious blend of exasperated confusion. "So. Um."

"This is rather awkward, isn't it?"

"It is, rather," John agreed wryly, and as such, they'd both agreed to engage in that most English ceremony against awkwardness, tea, and were halfway through their first cups by the time Sherlock blew into the living room like a whirlwind, trailing scarves and mud in equal measure. 

"He just remembered," John told Sherlock accusingly. "I told you that he would."

"No I haven't, but I've been told that I ought to," Richard corrected, pulling a face. "And it seems that I own a most lovely house in Mayfair." 

"That's not the only house that you own," Sherlock replied absently, as though already bored of the subject, and flung himself at the armchair dragged up to the window, picking up his violin and the bow. 

"Oh, for God's sake, Sherlock," John growled, peevish whenever irritable. "Can't you take disaster seriously for once?"

"I made you breakfast this morning," Richard told him, a trifle - yes - a trifle hurt by John's abrupt re-classification of him as Public Enemy Number One. 

"And the bacon was burned and the eggs over-salted," John retorted, though he had the grace to look a little shamefaced. Sherlock, on the other hand, only drew a teeth-gritting snarl over the bridge of his violin.

"He hasn't yet remembered," Sherlock deigned to inform John slowly, as though speaking to a slow child.

"But he will! And he's gone back to his house! Met his pet sniper! Besides, don't you remember what he did the last time? You jumped off a building!"

"And he shot himself in the mouth, and we both survived," Sherlock replied reasonably. "Point?"

John sputtered. "Sherlock-"

"Oh, fine. Go on, shoot him. Do a double tap between his eyes and an insurance shot through his chest," Sherlock punctuated his words with sharp squeals over his poor abused instrument, "Danger averted. We'll dispose of the body, Mrs Hudson is out in the market at present, nobody will know. Go on."

"You know... I can't... well he's..." John sighed, rubbing a palm over his eyes. "You're awful. Simply awful."

"I agree," Richard added, rather fascinated by Sherlock's blunt and scientific instructions of how to do away with one Not-Richard-Brooks. "So my name is Jim Moriarty?"

" _James_ Moriarty," Sherlock corrected primly.

"And I'm your, what, your arch-nemesis?"

"Oh no, that's Mycroft," Sherlock shook his head reproachfully. "You're... entertainment."

" _Entertainment?_ " John yelped. "Sherlock, he nearly _destroyed_ you!"

"The word is 'nearly', my dear Watson, while you have no idea what Mycroft has been doing to my life ever since I was born. Stultifyingly tedious lessons in etiquette were the _least_ of it. Maybe you should take a walk," Sherlock suggested vaguely. "Clear your mind. Attend the clinic. I'm sure there're hordes of squalling children down with the spring flu to occupy your attention."

Richard hid a smirk, even as John stiffened. John's increasing numbers of shifts at the clinic had been a source of an ongoing Holmes-Watson cold war over the last few months, with battlelines drawn in snark and skirmishes fought in remarkable degrees of passive-aggressiveness on John's part and pure petulance on Sherlock's.

And to think that apparently _they_ were the normal ones. 

"And if he-"

"Excuse me," Richard cut in mildly, "You haven't asked me what I was going to do next."

John arched both his eyebrows, even as Sherlock chuckled and pawed another screeching note on his violin, before ceding into a quick, playful arpeggio. " _Do_ tell."

"I," Richard said firmly, "Am going to have some of the roast that Mrs Hudson has been preparing for dinner. Then I'm going to finish reading Harris' and Taylor's monograph on Shimura varieties, and then I'm going to bed." 

It was Sherlock's time to snort, though he smirked, even as he fixed his glance out of the window and drew a melancholy trill on his violin. "Suitably villainous."

"I'm only waiting for you to drop your guard," Richard agreed, and because John seemed frozen between aghast shock and suspicion, added, "But I'll make sure to oversalt your eggs and soldiers tomorrow, John. Mustn't disappoint."

"You're going to kill us all when you remember," John dictated in a solemn monotone, though he relaxed just a fraction, his eyes still narrowed dangerously. 

"You could always shoot him now," Sherlock reminded him sweetly.

"The man's _unarmed_ , Sherlock."

"He's not unarmed. People like us never are," Sherlock observed, pitching the trill an octave higher, almost high enough to grate. "Even as he is now, he's still one of the most dangerous person you'll have ever met in your life."

"Yes, but-" John began, which Richard took as his cue to exit the immediate premises, climbing up the treacherous stairway to the loft just as a spirited argument started, punctuated by increasingly ear-splitting violin abuse. 

Today, he took a slow care in washing up before going to bed, and he stared far longer at the ceiling before he closed his eyes. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt, in an irrational thread of thought before he faded into sleep, the tiger was waiting. And he was looking forward to it-


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tigers are patient hunters.

I.

Jim didn't look in the least surprised when Sebastian settled into a chair opposite him in the cafe. One of Jim's old favourites, this: preppy, too-expensive, good coffee, also free - the owner had crossed a client of Jim's, once, in a small way, and Sebastian had been around to put the fear of God into his family.

"I would have thought that we would have been more subtle," Jim said conversationally, when the owner personally made a nervous cup of double shot espresso and served it to Sebastian. 

"Sometimes you don't do subtle, sir," Sebastian drawled. 

"Yes, yes, so I've heard. I've been given a summary about who I was before." 

_Was before_. That didn't sound good. Sebastian frowned. "Who you _are_."

"Still thinking!" Jim raised one bony finger, wagging it, then he sipped his cappuccino and smiled at Sebastian with a look that Sebastian remembered. Mayhem. "I think you should sell me on this, Seb. Maybe you should show me how fun it is to be a super-villain. Do I have a cat?"

"No cats." Sebastian said warily, unsure of the boss whenever he was in this fragile mood, teetering on the edge of chaos. "But I can do you a round of the house and other places. Thing is, you weren't really an office sort of guy, and you were pretty hands-on."

"So-o-o," Jim purred, as he finished the cappuccino, "What did I use to do? Light arson? Kidnapping? Ooh, I know, drug trafficking? Human trafficking?"

Sebastian looked around them sharply, but true to rush hour morning London, nobody paid them the least attention. "Only if it was necessary. You weren't really a... normal sort of criminal, boss. You were in consulting."

"Consulting? For?"

"For criminals," Sebastian noted dryly, though he dropped his voice. "That's how you built your business. You consulted."

"So, like Sherlock, but for the other side." Jim surmised, and a little of the manic brittleness in his grin faded. Sebastian allowed himself to relax a little. "That makes sense. But it must have gotten _bor-ring_." 

"It did. You began looking for other challenges." Sebastian shot him an even stare. "That's what landed you in hospital in the first place."

"And," Jim chirped, Sebastian's heart sinking as the manic edge crept back into the boss' eyes, "Now, I'm _not_ bored. Success!"

Sebastian grit his teeth. "But you will get bored, sooner or later. So do you want to look at what you used to do? Maybe," Sebastian added, as inspiration struck, "Maybe you could figure out what you want to do next. And you won't have to live in that tiny flat any longer, you could move back to Mayfair."

The boss tilted his head, staring at him, and before Sebastian could try to sweeten the pot any further, somehow, he asked, "So, where do _you_ live, Seb?"

"Me?" Sebastian repeated, startled for a moment. "Why, uh, well, I've got safehouses around London and-"

"That's not answering the question, is it?"

"I've got a place in Hackney."

"Did I use to know about it?"

Sebastian lifted a shoulder into a shrug. "Sure. You know everything. But you never went there, if that's what you're asking."

"Why not?"

"Don't know." Sebastian smiled, humourless. "You probably thought that you would find it 'boring'. That's my guess."

"And mine," Jim allowed cheerfully. "Well, let's go then."

"Go? Where?"

"Your place." Jim dropped the cup on the table, with a harsh tinkling sound, and Sebastian instinctively winced. "You pay. And drive."

It was a sign of how very fucked up his work-life relationship was that Jim's sheer, familiar obnoxiousness was like a shot of straight up relief. "Yes, sir." 

He had driven to the cafe himself, in a sweet little silver Aston Martin that he had felt like buying after watching the last Bond flick, and the boss hummed appreciatively to himself as he settled into the front passenger seat. "Nice. My car, or yours?"

"Mine," Sebastian said, as he started up the engine. "You can't drive. Or rather, you can, but you can't seem to control the urge to commit the occasional act of vehicular manslaughter."

"Sounds about right." There was something off about Jim's remark, though, though he was looking out of the window, watching oncoming traffic with the avid detachment of an adrenaline junkie. 

Despite Sebastian's efforts to draw him out of it, Jim stayed silent, all the way until he had followed Sebastian up into his flat, in the top floor of a fairly run-down block near central Hackney. It was next to the fire escape, and it had decent heating, a good view of the street, and old-fashioned solid brick walls: a perfect sniper's roost. Jim ambled around the small flat, touching everything curiously: the small, unused kitchenette and counter, the dusty telly, the old, sagging leather couch, and finally, the wardrobe where Sebastian kept most of his favourite guns. 

Nimble fingers settled on the combination lock, then Jim turned around rather than trying for the number. "Cosy place. A little _too_ cozy. Do I underpay you or something?"

"I've got money in the bank," Sebastian said mildly, amused, as he settled down into the couch. "Enough to get a house right in your neighbourhood if I wanted. You're a generous paymaster."

"And you like this place why?" Jim eyed the window, then the wall, running his finger over the plaster. "I'm hardly about to ask you to smoke anyone off this street."

"I just like it," Sebastian said calmly. "I come here when I want the quiet. But most of the time, I'm running your jobs. So it's not as though I sit around here all day. Besides, keeping a big, fuck-off house in Mayfair isn't my style."

Jim's teeth gleamed white at him as he turned. " _Ooh_. Sore p-oi-nt."

"Mayfair's a security nightmare, sir."

"Well, that's why I pay you, eh?" Skinny arms wrapped around Sebastian's neck, even as he tried and failed not to tense, and a bony jaw pressed against his skull. "I'm thinking, crime is _so_ last Monday. If I got bored enough to try and get myself killed, I must have been _rea-ally_ bored. Yes?"

"I don't know," Sebastian said, gritting his teeth.

"No need to get all defensive," Jim pressed a mocking kiss to his hair. "I'm sure it wasn't your fault, Seb."

"Then what do you want to do now?" Sebastian asked evenly. He hadn't quite imagined Jim... _not_ wanting to come back to their work. He _couldn't_.

"I thought that maybe I would try art," Jim said facetiously, then giggled his mad little grating giggle when Sebastian sucked in a sharp breath. " _Joking_. Don't know. Haven't thought about it, really. But there's got to be _something_ new out there. Something interesting. Maybe we could... take over a small country?"

"You'll get bored of the fine detail in no time." Sebastian couldn't begin to imagine how complicated running a country would be: some days he could barely manage the Outfit.

"Or... maybe crime, altogether," Jim mused. "Make it all globally mine. One syndicate. Like the Google of Crime."

Sebastian wasn't sure if he liked that more or less than the crazy idea about usurping a country. "Same problem about fine detail, boss."

"Shut up, I'm thinking," Jim nipped him on the ear, then added, "Waffles. Strawberry waffles. For lunch."

"I know the place, boss." It was strange sometimes what was familiar ground and what wasn't. "Sir, about the Outfit-"

"Good God, is that what we call ourselves? _Awful_. We simply _must_ rebrand." Jim giggled again, and pushed away from the couch, sauntering towards the kitchenette, where he opened a random cupboard and pulled a face when he saw that it was as empty and as dusty as the disused TV. "What do you eat, eh? Kibble?"

"Whatever you felt like eating, boss." Sebastian hesitated, then added, "There's food in the Mayfair house. A housekeeper. If that's what you mean." 

"Oh, excellent. I'm one of those ethical pet owners, then." 

Sebastian grit his teeth and reminded himself not to let the not-quite-there version of the boss bait him. "Sure."

"So, you've never used this kitchen before?" Jim had climbed up onto the kitchen counter, his feet dangling over the edge.

"Nope. Never got around to learning how to cook, never will."

"Hm," Jim grinned, and the mayhem was back, and more. "Come here then, Seb. Maybe you should reacquaint yourself with the... facilities." 

The boss was...? Yes, of course he was. Sebastian swallowed as he got to his feet, lust already whispering hot through his veins. "Yes, sir, _oh_ yes."

1.0.

"So you don't have to worry about me anymore," Richard-not-quite-Jim concluded, sprawled in the spare armchair.

John shot him, then Sherlock, then Sebastian - looming behind Richard's chair - a startled look, then he flinched when Sherlock drawled, "Sounds fair."

" _Fair_?" John exclaimed. "For God's sake, Sherlock, the criminal mastermind in your back yard's just decided to go global!"

"That's not what I said," Richard said petulantly.

"Exactly, _do_ keep up, John." Sherlock agreed, even as he sunk deeper into his chair, steepling his fingers. "So you're going to... create new forms of crime? Interesting." 

"The darknet has a wealth of possibilities," Richard agreed. "Everything's been _so_ overdone. I think I need to start being creative again."

"Excellent," Sherlock smiled thinly.

" _Excellent_?" John repeated, in disbelief.

"Oh, stop that, John, it's getting tiresome," Sherlock said reproachfully, without looking up. "Well then, I look forward to seeing what you might think up."

"Likewise, I look forward to seeing how you might get around stopping me this time."

"But no more blackmail."

"And no bullets."

" _So_ six months ago," Sherlock agreed, and they exchanged sharp grins. 

"I give up," John said, resigned, and looked over to Sebastian - in the corner of Richard's eye, Sebastian shrugged, as though agreeing. "But I'm not ever going to your funeral again, Sherlock, even if it's real."

"I wouldn't care, I would be dead," Sherlock said, in his clipped tone. "Well then, good talk, James. About your things in the loft...?"

"Sebastian's here to pack it for me. Say goodbye to Mrs Hudson for me, and I'll be interested to know how the nitroglycerine experiment went. Text." 

"Will do," Sherlock agreed equably. "John, see, this has been going _rather_ well."

"The hell you say," John rolled his eyes, "We're loosing a new evil on the world, and all that. I'm going to tell Lestrade."

"Oh, if you must, but he'll be _so_ tedious about it, and my brother's out of the country so I can't arrange for him to be intercepted." Sherlock complained, and Richard let them bicker even as he got up to go to the loft, Sebastian crowding in behind him. He slouched onto the bed as Sebastian packed, folding everything neatly into a suitcase that they had brought. 'Richard Brooks' didn't have very much by way of possessions save for clothes and books, and Sebastian was done in no time.

"All ready, boss," he said, crouched where he was on the floor. "Might want to go before the cops get here."

"Oh, you can handle cops," Richard yawned, without getting up. 

"I _could_ , but it's a right bother, the sort that bores you utterly, what with all the hoops we have to go through to get it settled."

"True." Richard rolled up onto his feet, striding over to where Sebastian was still latching up the suitcase. Sebastian glanced up when he knocked a knee into one broad shoulder, smirked, and brushed his lips in a kiss over the crotch of Richard's jeans. 

"Here?" Sebastian drawled, his eyes smoky again with want.

"Maybe not. Then John would really try and shoot us," Richard said regretfully. "Just get me home," he added, and realized that he meant it. He _knew_. The Mayfair house was _his_ , and this was his world, with Sebastian by his side, with nothing under the sun strong enough to keep him from where he wanted to go next. He wasn't Richard any longer, not in his mind. He knew now who he had always been. 

"Sure thing, boss," Sebastian uncurled, picking up the suitcase. 

"And then," Jim said, with a final glance out of the loft room's skylight, "Let's go and set the world on fire."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> going around trying to finish my old wips. ^^;; Thanks for reading!


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